How about cutting the licence fee?

Last updated at 10:40 12 October 2005

Yesterday Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC, revealed how comprehensively the Corporation has sold its soul to the Government. He disclosed to a House of Commons committee the inflation-busting increases in the licence fee which the BBC hopes to impose on us between 2007 and 2014.

Since these increases are audacious in the extreme - an annual increase of 2.3 per cent above the official price index for the seven-year period - we can be pretty certain that the BBC has already been given the nod by the Government. This is the reward it has won for its craven attitude towards New Labour during the 18 months since the Hutton report.

For a brief period BBC bosses had, largely by accident, found themselves at odds with No. 10 over its reporting of Iraq. Then a new chairman, Michael Grade, and Mr Thompson were appointed, and the BBC reverted to its more familiar role as the Blair (or sometimes Brown) Broadcasting Corporation.

In recent weeks, Mr Grade and Mr Thompson apparently came close to sacking its most robust interviewer, John Humphrys, who is hated by New Labour, simply because he had made remarks at a private function which were construed by the Blairite Times newspaper as being unfriendly. Then BBC1 had to be shamed by its rival ITN News into taking seriously the ejection of veteran activist Walter Wolfgang from the Labour Party Conference after virtually ignoring the incident in its early evening news bulletin.

The proposed new licence fee, and the continued existence of the BBC in its present form, is the reward for protecting the interests of New Labour so assiduously. Of course, no one at the Corporation or in the Government has considered for a moment the interests of licence payers, many of whom are financially hard pressed, who are being asked to pay ever greater amounts simply for the privilege of owning a television.

And equally no one has thought to question whether the BBC, as it is presently constituted, has role in a world where dozens of digital channels are available. No one has seriously asked whether the BBC any longer offers a service which justifies a mandatory licence fee.

I can think of one or two arguments in favour of the BBC. It is one of the few remaining truly national institutions that remind us that we are British at a time when devolution is pushing the constituent parts of the United Kingdom ever further apart. And there are still enclaves within the BBC which provide a quality of programming that is not easy to find elsewhere.

But there are more arguments on the other side of the ledger. BBC1 once produced dramas and documentaries of a standard that could not often be found on commercial television. It is perfectly true that in recent years ITV has deteriorated, but BBC1 has almost equalled its downward spiral with an ever-increasing quotient of reality television, soaps and trashy docudramas.

Which home-grown memorable series has BBC1 shown in recent years? It is difficult to think of more than two or three. Yet American television, condescended to by many ignorant people simply because it is commercial, has produced an endless succession of gripping dramas and fine comedies, some of which are shown on the BBC: 24, The Sopranos, The West Wing, Lost, Six Foot Under, ER, The Simpsons and even Friends. Despite its vast resources, the BBC is incapable of matching such creativity, with a few honourable exceptions such as Little Britain and The Office.

As for that supposed redoubt of excellence, BBC2, good things are still to be found there - such as a brilliant new series about the Middle East, the first part of which was shown on Monday evening - but some programmes which it would previously have shown have migrated to little-watched BBC channels such as BBC4.

There is no possible justification for the imposition of a tax - for that is what the television licence is - to fund BBC1 (which takes the biggest slice of the Corporation's budget) or Radio 1. They provide nothing that is not readily obtainable on commercial or satellite channels. BBC2 is a borderline case, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that it provides more quality programmes than are already available on satellite and cable channels.

Certainly there are some pockets of excellence within the BBC - parts of Radio 4, Radio 3, bits of Radio 2 - offering programmes that one could not easily find elsewhere. Yet even here there are reasons for disquiet. The BBC is run and mostly staffed by a Left-leaning metropolitan elite whose views about the family, drugs, politics, the EU and almost anything you care to mention inevitably reflect the prejudices of that elite.

This elite perpetuates itself in a remarkable way. Scandalously, the BBC advertises all its posts in The Guardian, and rarely in other publications, thus ensuring that its recruits are drawn from the Left-leaning readership of that newspaper.

Many employees in the BBC News Department are hired directly from university. Without any experience of real life, they imbibe the nostrums of political correctness as they did their mother's milk. They are also likely to accept the prevailing notion that most problems in life are best solved by the State.

To put it at its most basic, why should people who do not share these beliefs - possibly the majority of the country - be forced to subsidise a Corporation whose values are often at odds with their own? The most fundamental objection to the licence fee is that it is imposed purely on the basis that we wish to own a television. We are forced to pay for programmes we do not watch, and to sustain an enormous news and current affairs machine that continually offers a prospectus for this country we may not share.

In an ideal world, the commercial arms of the BBC would be auctioned off, and the quality parts maintained by voluntary subscription. For all the Corporation's faults, I would cheerfully subscribe to a package including Radio 4, Radio 3 and the best of television, as I am sure millions of people would do. We would pay a lot less than we do via the licence fee - and it would be voluntary.

Of course, this isn't going to happen under a New Labour Government, which now has a suborned BBC exactly where it wants it. Conceivably, it might come about if the Tories should ever return to power, though the prospect of that happening, so long as the BBC is inclined to emphasise their defects as a forlorn and hopeless sect, may be judged pretty remote.

But there is no reason why we should accept the stitch-up that has taken place between the Government and the BBC, and calmly accept the whopping, above-inflation increases unveiled yesterday by Mark Thompson and Michael Grade. The arrogance of these people knows no bounds. They assume that their contract is with New Labour, which must be reassured that the BBC is going to behave itself, rather than with the people who pay their wages and bankroll their grandiose plans for expansion.

Licence payers could, and should, disrupt this cosy little dialogue between the BBC bosses and the Government. At a time when the economy seems set to go downhill, when more tax rises loom, the Corporation impudently and shamelessly divulges its proposal to raise its mandatory tax above the rate of inflation, as it has done for the past few years. If the BBC cannot yet be broken up and sold, it can at least be told that a licence fee of nearly £180 a year by 2014 is not acceptable.

Indeed, judged by the deterioration of much of its programmemaking, it could even be argued that the BBC should reduce the licence fee. But then pigs may yet fly.